Ground Zero Is Not Debra Burlingame's to Define

It can be hard to keep up with the growing list of people putting their names to anti-Park51 advocacy, but here's a name that stood out for me: Debra Burlingame. The former lawyer and Court TV personality lost her brother, a pilot, in the attack on the Pentagon, and she has been a leader in various efforts to preserve his and all that day's victims' memories. This is a just and honorable cause. She is in a fairly unique position to fight for it. It is thus disappointing to see her exploit that position on a political matter. Here's Burlingame on CNN earlier this week, speaking of the proposed Islamic community center:

"This is nothing short of a provocation, an insult to the families of people who were murdered, whose bodies were scattered all across that site."

Leave aside for the moment Burlingame's understanding of Park51's meaning; there is no meaning everyone can agree upon. But Burlingame ties her understanding of Park51 to a troublesome understanding of Ground Zero itself, and that is — or should be — common ground.

For Burlingame, the site bodies were scattered across is not simply that of the former World Trade Center: She casts a much wider net. Speaking to the New York Daily News this week, she hinted at its reach:

"You had destruction from river to river. People had body parts on their window sills."

In a literal sense this is correct. But this view of Ground Zero invites crudeness, in both senses of the word. A narrow accounting of every window sill — this one yes, that one no — would be ghoulish, the bookkeeping of the heartless. On the other hand, if Ground Zero is to be broadly defined as those places where victims' remains may have come to rest, then everyone who sets foot anywhere near the WTC site is potentially trampling on a grave. That's everyone, from cops and bankers to college kids and construction workers. Neither patriots nor imams float above the sidewalks on a cloud of righteousness.

Yet that is the approach Burlingame appears to want. She went on to tell the Daily News that, "The idea that you can just mark off an area and say, 'That's what Ground Zero is,' is crazy."

Of course, it's not crazy; Burlingame clearly has a precise view of Ground Zero in mind; and unless she is equally incensed by the tramplings of cops, and bankers, and drunks, and strippers as those of the backers of Park51, then the only possible conclusion one can reach is that her Ground Zero, though it stretches from river to river, does not include a Muslim presence, period. More than that: It is demarcated by its lack of Muslim presence. I can only call that bigotry, though I am also sure her hurt and anger and feelings of effrontery are genuine.

The former is a group whose stated mission is "to provide information for concerned Americans about critical national security issues." In practice, however, it is a partisan opinion site, and of late its definition of critical national security issues has been limited to opposition to Park51 and President Obama's defense policies.

The latter is the private nonprofit "responsible for oversight of the design, raising the necessary funds, programming and operating the Memorial & Museum being built at the World Trade Center site." While recognizing that it is a private group, it is, by its own description, responsible for this nation's formal, physical monument to the 9/11 tragedy. As such, I believe it is responsible for ensuring that the monument uphold the highest ideals of Americanness, and the broadest view of the word "American." It must not, in any event, define the meaning or restrict the memory of 9/11 for partisan ends: 9/11 was both a universal and an intensely private event.

I no longer trust Burlingame to meet those standards. I therefore call for her resignation from the September 11 Memorial board.

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